


You belong with me (not swallowed in the sea)

by Elisexyz



Category: Timeless (TV 2016)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, F/M, Future Fic, Implied/Referenced Character Death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-24
Updated: 2018-08-24
Packaged: 2019-07-01 23:27:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,594
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15784323
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Elisexyz/pseuds/Elisexyz
Summary: “Actually— I—I was thinking that I could stay— help you,” she lets out, stumbling a bit on the words in an attempt to put it out in the open as quickly as possible. (...) If she has to let him go, if she can’t warn him so that he doesn’t die, can’t she at least gift him a softer start? Help him through the loneliest part of his journey?What's dead should stay dead, but that doesn't mean Lucy can't cheat a little, right?





	You belong with me (not swallowed in the sea)

**Author's Note:**

> For the Tumblr prompt: [1\. "Do you want me to leave?" + Garcy](http://heytheredeann.tumblr.com/post/177345951579/im-not-sure-you-still-accept-prompts-but). It grew into a bigger monster than I anticipated LOL.

“You know, I still haven’t heard a good reason why I should trust you and this weird crap,” he comments, and Lucy has to fight the urge to snatch the drink out of his hand. How many has he had already?

“The reason is that you don’t have anything to lose in trusting me,” she replies instead. She makes an effort to sound at least a bit detached, to not let him see the extent of her pain in seeing him barely hanging onto life because he doesn’t really have any good reason to fight anymore. Pointing it out makes her a bit nauseous. “If the information pans out, you get your family back—” She has practiced the lie in her head a thousand times, fully aware that there’s nothing else that she could say to convince him to jump on board – her Flynn has told her a thousand times, reassured her that she has to say it and that she’s forgiven for the lie – but it does nothing to lessen the shame and guilt she feels at the sharp, hurt look he gives her. “If it doesn’t—”

“I can still eat my gun later,” he completes, casually. Lucy shudders. “I see your point.”

She swallows, taking a deep breath. “I know that I am placing a big burden on your shoulders—”

“Can you guarantee that this—” he interrupts, gesturing sharply at the journal that’s still posed between them on the counter. “—will help me _hurt_ those bastards? That it can bring them down to the ground if nothing else?”

Lucy wishes that all those questions came with an easy answer, for a change. “Yes,” she says, even as she’s thinking of their guerrilla against Rittenhouse, of how they keep appearing in too many places for them to keep up, of frustration and all-nighters and _tears_ as she had to go on with hands covered in blood and a freshly empty seat in the Lifeboat. “Yes,” she repeats.

Flynn stares at her for a few seconds, calculating, and it’s laughable how, after wishing so many times for just one more day, one hour, one _minute_ , she finally gets to look at him in the eye one more time and there isn’t much to be recognized in there. That’s not the man she loved and lost, that’s just who he used to be.

But it’ll have to do.

“Okay,” he finally says, his eyes falling on the journal for a second before coming right back up to her face. “I’ll read your sci-fi journal from the future, and just hope that you are not fucking with my head and that it’ll get me my family back— or that it gets me killed hunting down those bastards, at least.”

Lucy can’t help wincing at that, fighting back the urge to warn him, to snatch the journal away and add some final notes to make sure that history doesn’t repeat itself – but if there’s one thing that they’ve learned by now is that history somehow wants to happen, that some things are just meant to be; trying to change things that should not be changed is likely to only do more damage, and if she’s fated to lose him she _will_ , one way or the other; _what’s dead should stay dead_ , she repeats, thinking of Jessica, of Rufus, of how trying to undo _their_ demise either never worked or screwed them all over; most days, Jiya can’t even look at her in the eye, knowing that they ended up trading _her_ lover for Lucy’s.

He slowly moves his hand towards the journal, sliding it on the counter until it’s closer to him.

“What now?” he prompts, raising his eyes on her again. “You hop onto your time machine and we’ll see each other in a couple of years?”

Lucy clicks her tongue. “Actually— I—I was thinking that I could stay— help you,” she lets out, stumbling a bit on the words in an attempt to put it out in the open as quickly as possible.

She didn’t say anything to anyone, because she has been trying to talk herself out of it since when she stepped foot in the Lifeboat, because she _knows_ that she’s not supposed to do this, that she the butterfly effect could be a _problem_ — but she’ll be careful. She’ll stay in hiding, keep him company, possibly get yelled at when she’ll refuse to give him tips to not alter the timeline. This can _work_.

She knows that that’s desperation talking, that it’s a stupid plan that might have some awful consequences, but she’s _missed_ him, and although this isn’t exactly the right Flynn she can’t help looking at him and seeing her own pain in his eyes, in a newly heart-breaking way: they are both in desperate need for their home, and to hell with it, Lucy has already sacrificed _so much_ , she can’t leave him behind to suffer knowing that she’ll go back to her own emptiness as well.

Why can’t they be there for each other, if only for a while? Why can’t she be there for him while he waits for the right Lucy, and why can’t she look for _her_ Flynn in the man that she’ll be helping?

After all, he has a rocky road ahead, it’s unfair to dump it all on him and leave him to it.

If she has to let him go, if she can’t warn him so that he doesn’t die, can’t she at least gift him a softer start? Help him through the loneliest part of his journey?

Flynn raises his eyebrows. “What, don’t you have a family to go back to?”

Lucy gives him a self-deprecating smile. “Lost most of it to Rittenhouse. What’s left—” She swallows. “They won’t notice. I can always jump back to the day after I left.”

He stares at her, his face blank. “I still don’t get why you’d stay.”

“To help you,” she stresses. _To help myself. Because I miss you_.

If he senses that that’s not the whole story, he doesn’t point it out. “Alright,” he says, slowly. “What’s first?”

 

Flynn has a motel room to a false name, and although it’s not technically _appropriate_ to share a room with a supposedly strange man, she doesn’t feel like she can bring herself to let him out of her sight, not just yet, so she walks with him back to the motel, resisting the urge to help him stand whenever she sees him swaying – she tried to reach for his arm the first time, and he stiffened under her fingers: she doesn’t think she can bear that kind of slap in the face twice.

She turns the key when his shaking hands make it a bit too difficult, and she tries not to wince at the still awfully suspicious look that he gives her – she wonders if for him it felt anything like this back at the Hindenburg, even though he just knew her as a some kind of guardian angel and a bunch of words on a journal.

He inspects her the way he would a threat, even though he’s had way too many drinks for his eyes to properly focus and he seems to quickly give it up with a shrug. “I’ll take the floor,” he simply grumbles, getting past the door and expecting her to follow.

The room is small and the only place to sleep besides the bed is, in fact, a chair, that looks way less comfortable than the floor. Lucy is reminded of those first nights, when Flynn would somehow make himself fit into a chair in his own room in the bunker, just so that she could have the small bed. That was before they started simply sharing – which she prompted, too needy to simply stop knocking on his door but too guilty to let him sleep so uncomfortably another night –, and Lucy is so very tempted to just let them both fall on the bed, to hold him and kiss him to make him feel how much she’s missed him, as if he could _know_ the reason behind it, as if she could will him to remember something that has yet to happen.

Instead, she closes the door behind her. “I think you need it more than I do,” she replies, dropping on the chair before he can say anything about it. She’s seen him drunk, and she knows that he’ll be out cold way before she’ll manage to find a comfortable position in that chair: she’ll get up and look for an extra blanket and pillow to put on the floor then.

Flynn stares at her for a few seconds, and finally he seems to decide that he doesn’t feel like insisting with the chivalry: he gets out of his shoes and drops on the bed, lying on his stomach fully clothed, slowly getting out the gun he kept tugged in his jeans and holding it in his right hand, on the side where he’s facing Lucy – she tries not to take offense at the instinctive precaution.

She thinks about suggesting that he gets out of his clothes at least, but they don’t have that kind of relationship right now, they actually don’t have any relationship at all, so she bites her tongue and forcibly adverts her eyes, so that if he’s awake enough to notice he won’t catch her staring like a creep.

She distracts herself by counting the cracks on the wall, the stains on the ceiling, and she tries not to think of how likely this is to end _badly_. Flynn still has the journal on him, so she could change her mind and slip out, leave him to it like she’s supposed to and go back to her guerrilla like nothing happened.

But if it was difficult to phantom walking away from him before she even arrived to São Paolo, it’s nothing short of impossible when he’s right _there_ in front of her, lonely and broken like she is, just with no reason to hide it. How _can_ she condemn them both to misery and loneliness when she can give him some company and find herself some echo of what she’s lost?

She’ll pull the plug if she senses that it’s going wrong, she promises herself. She _will_ – she’s not sure she can, but she’ll _try;_ that’s all anyone can do, right?

When she dares to look at him, he’s already asleep, and a small smile twists her lips in spite of everything, because barring how pale and worn out he looks this is almost intimately peaceful, _familiar_.

She waits a few seconds to see if he’ll wake, then she slowly gets up, wincing as the chair creeks. He doesn’t move though, and she walks up to him, taking a stupid risk just so that she can get a few moments observing him up-close, her fingers twitching with the urgency to reach out.

She eventually caves, thinking of how soundly he sleeps when he’s drunk and deciding that she might actually be okay with getting shot for this, and she brushes a chunk of hair away from his sweaty forehead, holding her breath the whole time, even after it’s clear that he’s not going to stir.

She can’t leave, she truly can’t. She can’t phantom how the other her managed it.

He’s so hurt and alone and she can’t leave him.

“I’m sorry,” she lets out in a whisper, and she’s not sure if she’s apologizing for not warning him, for not _saving_ him, or if it’s for all the pain he’ll have to go through because of this quest, if it’s for staying when she shouldn’t, if it’s for everything at once.

 _What’s dead should stay dead, what’s dead should stay dead, what’s dead_ —

She walks away, each step heavier than the other, and she finally turns her back on him to check in the closet for what she needs: she only finds an extra blanket, not sign of a pillow.

She resolves to wrap it around her shoulders and sleep on the chair – or rather, not sleep, just creepily staring at Flynn for as long as her eyes will stay open.

She turns off the light and curls up on the chair, knees to her chest as she waits for her eyes to adjust to the dark.

She ends up getting some sleep here and there, for what feel like ten minutes at the time, and Flynn doesn’t move one inch throughout the night. When she opens her eyes to sunlight coming through the window, she shifts on the chair, putting her legs down and biting back a moan of pain upon realizing that every inch of her body is sore as hell and that she doesn’t feel rested at all. Figures.

Flynn is still sleeping. She remembers seeing a coffee shop near the motel, so she figures that if she fixes her hair a bit she’s presentable enough to buy them both some coffee – his might get cold before he wakes, but she really doesn’t feel like staying in that chair any longer, and if she doesn’t _do_ something she might give in to the temptation of laying down next to him.

The bubble of normalcy waiting for her outside somehow manages to baffle her: she doesn’t belong to this time, yet no one is none the wiser. She’s done it before, she has travelled back so many times that she’s lost count, but this somehow feels doubly wrong, and it makes her feel displaced, because she’s by no means _supposed_ to be here, her mission ended the night before.

She manages to get the coffee without incident, and when she goes back to the motel room Flynn is awake, sitting on his bed and looking at the journal with a confused frown.

As soon as she gets in, his head snaps up, and Lucy almost drops the coffees, startled by his sharp reaction.

“Uh, hi,” she ends up saying, under his fixed gaze. “I brought coffee.”

She waits a few seconds before walking up to him and handing him his cup, almost afraid that he’d refuse it because he distrusts her that much. Instead, he accepts it without a word, and Lucy can’t even bring herself to find humour in the way his hair is all messed up in the side he slept on, which would normally prompt at least a bit of teasing.

She steps back to her chair, coffee in hand and a knot in her stomach.

“I thought you’d left,” Flynn comments, before taking a single sip. He’s looking at her, but she can’t read his expression, and it frustrates her to no end, because they usually click so effortlessly and now it’s like he has turned into a language she never learnt how to speak.

“Do you _want_ me to?” she asks, maybe a bit too hesitantly for him not to guess what’s the answer she’s hoping for.

There’s an heavy pause, and Lucy holds her breath.

“Can you really help me burning them down?” he finally asks.

She swallows: the journal has all the necessary information, and she can’t do much if she wants to at least _try_ to preserve the timeline, but moral support counts as help, right?

“Yes,” she says, as firmly as she can.

Flynn nods, licking his lips. “Okay. Then you’re welcome to stay,” he says, drily.

It’s a far cry from what she’d truly need from him, but she _can_ help him, and that will be enough.

 


End file.
